Google Ranks Search Ads on Load Time, Bringing Simplicity to the Top

05/23/2008

In mid-June 2008, Google started to rank pages on how fast they loaded. Stating that slow load times hurt the user experience, the search engine giant disclosed that it would start taking this metric into consideration.

Google uses a Quality Score to help set the price of an ad. For example, landing pages that take more than the average determined time to load will be penalized. Internet marketers and retailers can test the landing load page time via the Keyword Analysis page in AdWords.

How does this affect advertisers? They will have to pay more to get higher positions, or accept the lower results. This could hurt some ad networks that have a plethora of third-party content. This is because third-party content slows down load time. A variety of factors contribute to this, e.g., tracking tags from vendors.

Rotating pages are another culprit that can slow down load time. If a page has a rotating image, for example, that is supposed to be displayed every 15 seconds, then Google doesn’t consider it fully load until the page is refreshed.

Another penalty to be worried about: redirecting users to other pages before sending them to their final, requested destination. Many Internet marketers and online advertisers use these to sign up subscribers, for example, or ask a survey question.

A new rule that should be added to the mix: minimize redirects and refreshes.

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